Want a Diverse C-Suite? Start at B-School.

It’s no secret that increasing diversity at the top ranks of corporate America has been an arduous process.

One attempt to tackle the problem entails attracting more racial and ethnic minorities to business schools. But it’s been a struggle – and a bit of a vicious cycle. As long as minorities are, well, in the minority, prospective students will feel out of place and not apply, perpetuating their underrepresentation at schools. (For more, see this article in Thursday’s Journal.)

The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a group of 17 schools (including Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business) and more than 80 companies (among them ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart and Goldman Sachs), offers discounts on applications to those schools, a full scholarship for more than 200 students from traditionally underrepresented groups (such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans) annually– paid for by the schools – and access to coveted jobs upon graduation.

Chief Executive Peter Aranda says Consortium member schools have substantially higher minority enrollment than top-50 programs that are not members of the group. Among Consortium schools, 10% of enrolled students are underrepresented minorities—a small number, but still higher than in non-member programs, according to Aranda.

Mr. Aranda, 52 years old, is a member of the Cherokee and Otomi tribes and received a fellowship through Consortium for his own M.B.A. at Washington University in St. Louis’s Olin School.

He spoke with At Work about marketing business education to minority communities and the industries that are embracing diversity. Edited excerpts:

WSJ: What is business schools’ responsibility in improving diversity in business?

Aranda: [Schools] have a role in preparing future business leaders to succeed in the environment we live in, where someday soon everyone will be a minority.

One of the things that troubles me about the M.B.A. curriculum is that it pays attention to diversity from an employment perspective only. We need to look at diversity as a strategic initiative. How do we develop goods and services for niche markets? How do we communicate through marketing vehicles that resonate with those communities?

WSJ: Even if you can get more minorities into business school, how do you break down prejudices in the corporate world?

Aranda: People in markets that are business-to-consumer have long realized that if you want to market goods and services in a particular community, you need to have people who understand that community. If you want to retain a workforce that is comprised of different ethnic groups, then you need to have management types that represent those groups.

The business-to-business side, like investment banking or commercial real estate, [hasn’t] had [that same] need. They were primarily white men selling services to more white men.

WSJ: There are a number of top institutions in the Consortium, but three are notably absent: Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Does it signify anything that those three are not part of the group?

Aranda: Our first three schools were Washington University, Indiana University[’s Kelley School of Business] and the [Wisconsin School of Business at] University of Wisconsin, so the schools at the highest end of the ranking spectrum thought that we were more middle-class, if you will.

If you look at our recent expansion, we added Yale [School of Management], Cornell [University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management], [University of California,] Berkeley[’s Haas School of Business] and [University of California, Los Angeles’s] Anderson [School of Management].

Would I like to have one of those schools? Sure. Would I like to have all of them? Definitely not. Because if we have all of the schools, that competitive advantage [for Consortium] goes away.

WSJ: Why is it a bad thing if that competitive advantage goes away?

Aranda: It doesn’t necessarily improve the enrollment at any of the schools. If you are a top-five school who’s a member of the Consortium, there’s probably a pretty good chance that you can steal candidates from other top-five schools who are outside of the Consortium because of the benefits.

About At Work

Written and edited by The Wall Street Journal’s Management & Careers group, At Work covers life on the job, from getting ahead to managing staff to finding passion and purpose in the office. Tips, questions? email us.